


Potentially Problematic Circumstances Involving A Rather Pesky Virus, A Blind Girl, A Computer Geek, And A Mutant

by lookingdead



Series: Potentially Problematic Circumstances Involving A Rather Pesky Virus, A Blind Girl, A Computer Geek, And A Mutant [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sgrub Session, Gen, Pandemics, Zombiestuck, spacestationstuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-07
Updated: 2013-04-07
Packaged: 2017-12-07 19:30:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/752194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lookingdead/pseuds/lookingdead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>GC: 1 HAV3 R34SON TO B3L13V3 TH4T W3 4R3 3XP3R13NC1NG C1RCUMST4NC3S TH4T COULD BE P3RC31VED 4S PROBL3MAT1C.</p><p>GC: PROBL3M4T1C 1N 4 W4Y TH4T S33MS TO H4V3 R3SULT3D 1N QU1T3 TH3 COLORFUL M3SS.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Potentially Problematic Circumstances Involving A Rather Pesky Virus, A Blind Girl, A Computer Geek, And A Mutant

**Author's Note:**

> Welp, this is my first completed homestuck fic. I actually didnt intend for this to go where it did when I started writing it so the plot seems pretty messy. Ah well, here you go. There will be two more parts if I decide to continue it.

His assistant is clearly just another kid from the pipes. He doesn’t look healthy enough to be anything else, not with the way he’s standing and you can smell the blood pooling under his eyes from a mile away, leaving a nice purple stain. Clearly his blood is more than a bit rusty. 

He was rewarded for surviving by being let off the planet, and punished for it by being given the most menial of jobs. Janitationers don’t require a blood test, so even the lowest bloods can get that job, and he is most certainly just clinging to the hemospectrum with rusted veins. You couldn’t tell it just by the way he’s dressed now, though. 

He’s been cleaned up quite a bit. That suit he’s wearing, it’s bright red, double-breasted, incredibly showy and sweet smelling with honey-gold buttons and licorice black patterns woven over its entirety, probably isn’t his. It probably isn’t his choice in attire either. 

There’s barely any trace of the buttery and citric mixture that wafts from every other persons horns on him. They’re tiny, barely exposed from behind a nest of curly shadows. You suppress a giggle. 

It’s a wonder you can smell a thing, though, when everything should be heavily overpowered by the sweet aroma of all this red. Curtains of roses drape onto the rickety stage he’d been hauled out onto and there are jars and jars of cherry juice on the table beside him. The medical mask over your nose might’ve been made special and transparent for you, but it still dilutes and distorts the colors into a haze. 

Sideshows like these are common in the lowblood’s market. You really should just be going on your way. You don’t like to spend much time here for the sake of frivolity.

There’s too much hazard down here, too much risk of catching. There are so many sickened skins, so many splotches of pustules and so much moaning. There’s only been a smidgen of pained wailing. It’s much too much illness, though. The scent of vomit still permeates even the delicious candy hues. 

There’s another man beside the red-bathed anomaly on stage and his entire presence demands the attention of all who he encounters. He’s got a voice that slams into your chest and envelops you from within your ribs. He’s obviously a rust blood as well, with high curling horns, but his coat looks expensive and well tailored and it smells sweet and spicy, an orange that belongs to squashes. 

“Listen, listen, all who have been plagued with this terrible illness!”

One by one, the tide of entranced bodies moves in and crowds around the stage, flocking like flies to a honey trap and swarming your nose with a muddied mixture of colorful aromas. Your tongue lashes out from between your lips just once or twice, tasting the air with a bit more specificity so as to clarify what is before you. 

“Listen to me, all who have been crippled and drowned by the growing outbreak!”

You pull your hood down a bit further over your long-sightless eyes and push your glasses up the bridge of your nose. You listen carefully and force your nose’s attention to stay on the man in the sweet-potato suit and not let it drift to the shining jars of red.  
You push casually through the crowd. 

“Anyone, anyone who has fallen victim to this terrible illness, anyone who has been the quadrant-mate of one with such an illness who you’ve been forced to watch decay, who you ache so dearly with pity for and who’s pain you’d do all to alleviate!”

Oh, so he thinks he’s found a miracle cure, or so he wants everyone to think. So he wants you to think he’s got all the answers. So he wants you to think he’s found something really extraordinary. So he wants you to throw your money at him and take what he’s got.

And all of these people in this crowd, some with their sunken faces and yellowed skin, are desperate, aching with it right down to the marrow. They’re covered in splotches of warm reds and ruddy browns and mustard yellow and there are even a few smattered in green.

They’re all clawing through the blinding light, scraping along the ground trying to find someone who will haul them up again and off their sorry, abused, knees. They’ll drink up whatever they hear on this matter, inherently thirsty with shriveled up lips like smashed charcoal.

“I’ve come to tell you I’ve found the answer! I’ve come to tell you that your troubles can be washed away in just a few short days!”

Oh, this man radiates with this awful stench of deceit. 

You keep listening. 

“See, what I have here…” he gestures to the jars of liquid rubies, “…is a brand new cure!” 

Oh, yes, or course it is. Seems like it’s just paint, or maybe some mix of cheap food dye and something else. 

“And, now, my dear, fellow lowbloods,” he practically croons, “I must inform you that the highbloods have known of this all along…”

Lies. The highbloods are suffering with this sickness as much as the lowbloods. Both sides of the hemospectrum have been slathered in disease and both of them have been left to decay beneath its retched hand until they crumble, screeching and reeling under the weight of their functionless brains. 

There is nothing that they are hiding, at least not that you know of. They are just as desperate and helpless to this situation as anyone else. Of course, the lowbloods love what they’re hearing. 

You’d believe it too if you didn’t know better. 

“This here, ladies and gentleman, is something that you’ll never see anywhere else!”

He’s just buttering them all up to roast them. 

“And it is indeed a most curious concoction that is guaranteed to work!” 

Oh, Gods, just get on with it. The kid in the red suit rolls his eyes and adjusts himself. The man doesn’t fail to notice this and sends him a warning glare. 

“This elixir…” he picks up a jar, waves it about, makes a show of it,”…will bring to you the utmost of health. It will scrub your thinkpan clean and keep it from rotting! It will alleviate the coughing and if you put it on the boils, it will heal those as well! It’s a wonder drug, everything you’ll ever need. It will do all, folks, we can personally guarantee!” 

He gestures to the kid next to him, who was busying himself staring at his shined up shoes and either trying not to bolt, scream, vomit, or a combination of the three. Upon what is apparently queue, though, he snaps up and states his artificial claim.

“Oh yes, it’s, devastating amounts of miraculous. It’s definitely one of a kind, I can assure you of that. It’s gross amounts of anomalous and I can personally guarantee that this morning I felt like I was never going to get up again.”

His tone is sour, but his voice is loud and well used, but not aged. He sounds like he just turned nine not more than a few months ago. 

“Yes, Precisely! This, though, managed to relieve him entirely of his ailments!” the man continues. “It’s rich in iron, great for the immune system, and-“

This man is a con, a pure con. He sells bullshit and lies to anyone who will listen and, of course, there is always someone who will listen. You’re entirely sick of everything dripping from his mouth. 

This isn’t even what you’re supposed to be bothering with. You have business to attend to elsewhere and really have nothing to do with this man. You were just grateful for the temporary lapse in liquorice, pepper, and rust for a bit of cherries and roses. There really aren’t many attractive colors on this ship and your poor nose was getting sick of all the bland.

Oh well. It certainly was nice while it lasted. You contemplate buying some of the “elixir”, just for it’s smell, maybe to paint something with it, but then figure it’s probably something vile and not worth your money. 

There’s just something so hideously off about the whole thing and despite its tantalizing hue, you really have no desire to touch it. 

So you push back out of the crowd and kiss that lovely scent goodbye with a flick of your tongue and are on your way. 

The rest of your walk is a mixture of greys and blacks and generally the normal array of colors that aren’t particularly your favorites. There’s the occasional neon sign with its bright, illuminated and therefore amplified scent catching your attention, but that is really the only pleasantry you get. 

You come stalking up to Sollux’s apartment a few blocks after you’ve made it through a good portion of the yellow community. 

Each street in this place looks like some oversized hallway with its walls dotted with carefully spaced windows that go up two floors and with doors that don’t even seem to exist until they’re opened. You sorely miss your forest and the trees and the nice fresh air. 

You sigh, trying to shake the feeling off before it wells up inside you, and walk up to apartment 622 and ring the doorbell. 

The door whirrs open with no one behind it and you step inside. The apartment is sparsely decorated, or really entirely undecorated being décor was meant to enhance the space’s aesthetics. There was just the bare minimum, just the nutrition area, which was a mess with pots and pans and dishes of all sorts stacked high in the sink. 

There was the living area, which had a dull, boring, square couch and a dull boring generic television and a bland as all hell generic lamp. There was nothing on the walls and there was nothing on the shelves, nothing nothing nothing. Your moirail is horrifically boring when it comes to these kinds of things. Then again, he doesn’t particularly have any money. 

You walk up the stairs and do not think twice about wrenching the door open and barging into his mess of a respiteblock, which is a tangled web of wires and an apparent spawning ground for computer parts. 

“Good evening, Mister Captor,” you say to the hunched over skeleton wrapped in grey skin and crowned with doubled horns at the desk. He doesn’t look away from the screen. 

“Hey, TZ,” he says, absently. 

He’s never been the most sociable, but he’s gotten worse about it since the departure. 

“So I came to see if you were dying or not and am pleased to see you’re at least well enough to keep up with your workaholic complex,” you say, stepping carefully over wires in bright red boots. 

“And you apparently were concerned enough with this to temporarily abandon your own and couldn’t just ask me over pesterchum?”

He’s got a bit of a lisp and there’s a nasaly twinge to his voice. His voice is by far the most familiar one to you.

“Well, I had a bit of free time off of running around getting coffee and making copies for fancy legislacerators for long enough to come down and see one of my friends. Is that so terrible?” you say. 

“Guess not,” he says. 

“Plus with the rate of infection, you know,” you continue.

“Yeah, I know.”

You both eat dinner together on the couch downstairs and you find that he is showing no symptoms. That’s good. You were heavily concerned with his despondency lately. You discuss work, and share stories. They’re all very similar tales of menial chores and shitty internships that slip out in between forkfuls of noodles and fried grubs. 

The food is salty and low quality and absolutely delicious. You end up laughing about a story he told of him “accidentally” dumping a cup of coffee on a fellow intern and them getting blamed for the mess. You laugh for a time much longer than the story really deserves. 

You’re both tired.

You briefly mention the con artist and the cherry juice and he tells you he sees that guy selling the same shit nearly every week on his way to the office he works in. He says he’s been up to it for about a month now, sells a whole lot of it. He doesn’t know what it actually is either. 

Eventually the noodles are gone and you start snacking on cicadas and jelly. You don’t know how late it is until you turn on the television to discover horrible talk shows and infomercials. 

“I guess I really should go,” you say, stretching. 

“Yeah...” he agrees, disappointed. You miss being able to just hang out like this. You miss having time to do what you pleased and to live as you liked. You miss the fresh air and the colors and the trees and the grass beneath your feet. You miss the moons and the sky and you miss your childhood and you miss having something to look forward to. You miss waiting for the future instead of it being right here. You miss so very much and none of it is coming back. 

So you end up standing up and adjusting your pants as he chats with you until you’re at the door. You kiss his wrist and he kisses yours and then you push your mask back on and you’re on your way again. 

You walk back through the inky streets/corridors and they’re much, much emptier than before. You make your way back through the yellow district into the market place that connects it to the rust and brown districts. Here, it’s a bit more packed, but there aren’t the same kinds of people as before. The con artist is long gone, nothing left but the rusted sheets of haphazardly riveted metal that make up the stage. Every trace of red is gone. 

You wade through the congested space and all of the grey-skinned bodies crowned with scarred and chipped golden horns. You find yourself at the southern wall eventually and are able to scan your card, which tells a computer that you are a teal blood and are therefore allowed to leave this place, and an elevator unlocks for you. 

The doors slide open, you step into the lift, and they close again, shutting out all of the noise and clamor of the marketplace and drowning you in sudden, distinct, silence. The only sound is the noise of the elevator’s mechanisms whirring and humming as it pulls you from the lower levels of the ship. 

You go home to lay awake in your recouprecoon for an hour before drifting asleep. You narrowly avoid being late for work the next day. 

You faintly start to hear your neighbor screeching at odd hours over the next few days.

The next time you enter the lowblood’s market place, more than two weeks later, nothing has changed. Bodies still encase you as you walk and there is still so much illness. The salesman is still there. His assistant is not. 

His set still smells like candy and iron. 

You walk on past it, not wanting to waste time. As you slink through the crowd, which has been caked with an even thicker coating of sickness than last time, you keep your head tucked down. It smells so terrible down here. 

You near the edge of the great room that makes up this place and are nearing the entrance to the yellowbood’s district when you feel the sudden grasp of claws around your arm and your heart leaps. Your cane is out in an instant, the ruby red dragon’s head clutched in your fingers and the tip pointing into the leathery face of a man. His skin is covered in brown boils and one of his horns is snapped and scabbed. 

Your stance becomes intimidating and strong. Your cane does not waver. 

“I need money,” he says, looking straight into blind eyes. His voice is labored and his cough-abused throat cuts it sound into wisps. “I need you to lend me some.”

You shake his hand off. He’s sick. He’s sick and he’s touching you. He’s sick and he’s touching you. He’s sick he’s sick he’s sick he’s sick and he’s touching you he’s 

You jab him with your cane and take off running, just enough to put some distance between you and him. You slow down and take a deep breath and begin to way the options.

You might not catch it just from that, or you might and you could be at serious risk. You also may not be at any more risk now than you were before. You have been informed that if this happens, you aught to head to your hive immediately and disinfect. 

You’re pretty sure the illness doesn’t actually spread through touch like that, though. You aren’t sure. 

You turn around calmly to head back the way you came. 

After only a few steps you are met with the same boil covered face. Your cane is out again.

“I need money,” he says again, sternly. His left pupil smells like milk. You keep yourself balanced.

You don’t respond to him, but keep him at a distance with the length of your cane. You move slowly around him. He groans and clutches his sides as he suppresses a cough. You move a bit quicker. 

“M-Mon-“

He erupts into a coughing fit and you bolt from him. He hacks and chokes but there are claws in your arm soon. You turn around and smack him with your cane hard enough to knock him away. 

You’re off in another direction, any direction, and he’s following close behind you. 

You weave through crowds and the guy still follows, persistent and insane with illness. You’ve just got to ditch him. It should be easy. 

A blur of scents rushes passed you. You aren’t as good at ‘seeing’ while you run and you can hear the guy coughing as he runs, strained but still so manic it doesn’t even register to him how frail his body has become. 

You feel his claws nearly rake your skin, or so you imagine in preparation. You run and run until you’re thoroughly lost and are certain you can’t just shake him. 

You whirl around and smack him in the chest with your cane, sending him stumbling. He then lunges at you, clumsily. Your cane comes in contact with his sorry head and then your boot slams into his stomach. 

He crumples to the ground. He tries to push himself up again. Apparently you didn’t hit him quite hard enough the first time. You beat him on the head one more time and put him to sleep. 

You watch to make sure he doesn’t get up again. You don’t take your eyes off him until you’re about twenty feet away. 

He doesn’t budge. 

You walk back the way you came.

Or, the way you thought you came. 

You sniff the air and taste it just a bit and look for anything familiar that you’d just run passed. You think… you went… over down that hall. 

You take a turn, hoping that it will bring you back to the market place. You don’t know what to do about coming in contact with that man. You want to go home and make sure you haven’t risked catching, but today is really your only chance to go see Sollux.

You don’t want to risk taking any disease to him, either, though. You suppose heading home is the best course of action. You don’t think it spreads by touch or air, but you don’t know. You hate to admit it, you really do, but this illness scares you. Your mind is all you have left and it’s the last thing you want to lose. 

You soon realize you took the wrong way and slow down to look around. This shouldn’t be hard to figure out, you need to just let yourself think. 

You lean against a wall.

You do recognize this place. You were here, but you were coming from this same direction when you were running so you’ve definitely done something wrong. 

You’re in the rust district. 

You catch a sudden hint of warm spicy pumpkin to your left. The con man from earlier, with his curling horns and elaborate suit, cuts through the crowd, his demeanor no longer that of a performer. 

He walks right up to you and only for half a second do you wonder why he’d need to talk to you until you swiftly realize you’re leaning against his door.

“Excuse me,” he says, irritably. There is a glare in his eye.

You slide to the side and he enters without any more to it. 

You make your way down the hall calmly with thorough thought and are able to find your way back to the market in just less than fifteen minutes. You are now hyper aware of all the coughing and your ears are pricked with a few screeches. You need to check on Sollux, but you’re still concerned about weather the illness is now on your clothes and your skin. 

You don’t know when you’ll have free time again.

You wonder if you can be quick enough. 

You sigh and make your way over to the elevator and scan your card. 

When you reach your hive, your neighbor is finishing getting culled. Everything smells like sour berries, metallic teal blood smeared down her door. It’s blocked off while they clean. When you are finally clear to enter your own place of residence, you aren’t quick enough. 

It’ll be another two and a half weeks before you’re free again. 

You talk to him over a chat client, but it’s not exactly the same. 

GC: TH4TS THR33 OF MY N31GHBORS, TH3N. >:/ 

TA: next one2 biingo or 2ome 2hiit, right?

TA: the guy acro22 the 2treet from me got culled ye2terday. that2 four on my 2treet.

TA: iim going to wiin thii2 2hiit, TZ, you cant 2top me. iive got the upper hand here.

GC: WELL S33 4BOUT TH4T, M1ST3R SW33T 4ND SOUR R4SPB3RRY TW1ST. 

GC: BUT, 1V3 B33N F1ND1NG MOR3 4ND MOR3 CULL1NG F1L3S 4T WORK L4T3LY 4ND MOR3 TH4N H4LF OF TH3M 4R3 SUPPOS3D TO B3 “M3RCY” CULL1NGS.

GC: TH3Y’V3 ISSU3D QU4R3NT33NS 1N A F3W PL4C3S. 

When you go to see him the next time, the marketplace technically off limits, but you are able to pass with your ID. Shops have closed and neon signs have relinquished their delicious lights to the shadows. 

You walk through with a few eyes digging into you. The lack of people here is incredibly surreal and alarming. You can smell only a handful of bodies scattered throughout the whole atrium. 

You’d both talked about maybe postponing this visit, maybe waiting until things cooled down. The lowbloods were getting hit hard with this pandemic. Higher hues had been advised to stay out of the lower levels of the space station. 

The flashing ads, glittering with static, on the billboards are so much more prominent without the roar of people. 

It’s stuck, though. Which means there is a rather untalented yellowblood not doing their job. 

A little jingle about cake keeps going and going, with a crack in the same spot in the middle each time that makes it hitch and half to restart. It’s like a madman trying to do something over and over again and failing in the same way each time. 

The eyes on you get sharper and start to dig deeper and the stillness begins to encompass the entire market place. Your steps grow louder and louder, the click of your heels becoming a dangerously energetic echo as the ad on the billboard runs and breaks and runs and breaks. 

You can practically feel everyone’s stiffness. It suddenly occurs to you, in fact, that you’re the only one moving. 

You stop. 

Three beats of your heart echo through your chest and everyone scatters like a cluster of newly found roaches. The whole place erupts with movement, the clamor of so many feet padding across the floor 

You can smell rotting and yellow, like mustard and mold and old, old meat. You can smell iron and bacteria and sick, sick daffodils. 

You hear the smacking of feet on metal floors and your cane is in your hand. 

Screeches echo through your ears and you separate your cane into three strung together segments in a snap. 

You can feel hands grabbing at you, feel putrid hot breath on your face and can smell the rotting. You smack one away with a swing of your cane and kick another in a fatless stomach. 

The sick are getting more dangerous, apparently. 

You knock them over and they get right back up. Why are they not doing anything about this down here? This isn’t even close to anything you’ve seen on your level. Lowbloods just don’t like to go to the doctor because they’re afraid they’ll just get culled immediately. They are treated expendably. There are so many unreported illnesses and problems down here. It just spreads and spreads. 

You click your cane back together and stab one straight through the abdomen. It gushes with liquid rust and crumples into a heap of abused flesh and matted hair. 

You smack another one in the skull hard enough to send it crashing to the floor. It just gets right back up again, though. 

It seems like there’s more than there was, but you’re not sure. You could’ve sworn there was less than this.

You beat it back again, this time whacking it on each side of the head in rapid succession just to be safe. It collapses. 

You try to back up and make it toward the other end of the atrium, but they’re ravaging you from all directions. Overgrown nails and bony hands with yellowed skin grab at you and you have all you can do to smack them away. 

You decide there’s no time to think twice. You start jabbing at every hunk of diseased flesh your cane can find, kicking in a practiced manner and shoving shiny red boots into body chests. 

You send bodies toppling to the floor but they still grab at your wrists and your ankles and you waist and your hair. You slowly edge yourself through the atrium, but the place is enormous and you don’t know if you’ll be able to get there at any point soon. 

There’s definitely more. They just keep coming. 

You smack one of them in the horns and the thing is so frail that the horn actually breaks. They’re so sick and weak, but they just keep fighting. They’re mad, absolutely mad. 

How in the hell did this happen?

There’s a crowd of vultures pecking at your still perfectly healthy body and you need to make space enough to escape. There’s no way you’ll be able to kill all of these guys. You need to just make a nice door in this wall of angry flesh and make a run for now. You also want to do anything you can to get Sollux out of here and make sure he’s all right.

You jab, smack, and kick furiously but with efficient technique. You knock them down, but they build themselves back up. You keep going, desperate to survive this. You have to keep going. 

You cut them down, demolish them really, just enough to make the crowd thin enough for you to find an opening. Then you smell a weak spot and dive for it. 

You start off in the fastest sprint you’ve ever managed toward any door at all. 

They chase after you, but you press forward, your boots barely touching the floor. Your sense of color and place is heavily distorted in your franticness, but you are still able to somehow locate a door.

In fact, you only just slow down enough not to slam right into it. You press the button to open it and it doesn’t budge. It’s locked. It’s locked. Shit. Oh shit. It’s locked. Why the fuck is it locked?

You fumble with your cardkey as the hoard advances. You shove pictures of their claws raking your skin and of your neck snapping in two from the front of your mind.

You have your card in your fingers; it’s smooth and so perfectly wonderfully there.

You scan it as so many feet rush toward you.

It takes a second to read it. Does it always take that long to read it? Come on come on. You don’t have time for this!

Feet pound with your heart and shrieks wrack your nerves. 

You don’t look back.

The door accepts your card. 

You nearly feel claws on your arms and you bolt through the door before it’s even half open. You smack the button on the other side to close it, but it doesn’t go.

You keep running.

More follow you. 

You think the door did shut eventually, due to the severely diminished numbers, but not quick enough. There are still six or seven chasing after your with milky eyes and buttery skin.  
You run through empty streets and occasionally whirl around to smack on in the face as it reaches too close for comfort. 

You round a few corners and notice a door that’s been left open. There’s no light coming from it that you can see, but you decide to go for it and that maybe you can lose them that way.

You run through the entrance and into a small abandoned looking hive, with chairs toppled and dishes left. There’s a thick layer of dust that you can smell that wouldn’t be there otherwise.

You manically smack the button to close the door and it starts whirring shut, but not fast enough. 

Three of them follow you into the hive. 

You turn around like spinning blade and jam your cane straight into one of their hideous porcelain eyes, producing a smattering of tan blood. You use the leverage of its skull to send it crashing into a wall with all your strength. 

The next is a rustblood whose knees you kick back before flipping it end over end onto the floor. 

The last is another brown blood that dies with a cane thrust through the space between its ribs and collapses onto the floor with a resounding and wet, smack that reverberates through the entire room. 

Silence envelopes your body and bleeds into your brain through your ears. It echoes through your head and holds you gently as you breathe in and out and in and out. 

You take a few steps back and lean against the wall behind you. You slide down to the floor. 

You don’t know where you are. 

You can also hear clawing a shrill screeching and low growls coming from outside.

The stillness of the bodies doesn’t make you feel any safer. You don’t trust them to be dead. You’re also smattered in rust and tan and yellow. You think there’s no way you’re not infected now. 

You breathe in a few more gulps of air and pull out your phone. 

GC: M1ST3R C4PTOR 

GC: 1 HAV R34SON TO B3L1IV3 TH4T W3 4R3 3XP3R13NC1NG C1RCUMST4NC3S TH4T COULD BE P3RC31VED 4S PROBL3MAT1C.

GC: PROBL3M4T1C 1N 4 W4Y TH4T S33MS TO H4V3 R3SULT3D 1N QU1T3 TH3 COLORFUL M3SS. 

TA: you diidnt actually come down here diid you

GC: YOU COULD HAV3 M3NT1ON3D TH3 HO4RD OF S1CK P3OPL3, YOU KNOW. 

TA: ii diidn’t thiink youd actually come down here

TA: where are you?

GC: SOMON3’S H1V3.

GC: 1 DON’T TH1NK TH3Y’R3 HOM3, THOUGH.

TA: where though?

GC: 1 DON’T KNOW. TH3R3 W3R3 ZOMB13S CH4S1NG M3, 1T W4S K1ND OF H4RD TO P4Y 4TT3NT1ON.

TA: alriight

TA: don’t go anywhere iim going two try and locate you and try two get you here. 

TA: there are con2iiderably le22 2iick people where ii am

GC: OK4Y.

You think you hear shuffling upstairs. You perception sharpens and you reach for your cane. 

You stand up and step carefully around the bodies. You edge carefully toward the stairs, your footsteps as quiet as possible. You strain your ears.

You hear the plings of text messages and scraping at the door, but ignore them, overcome with focus. There’s more shuffling. 

You take a step up the stairway, thinking there may be another one of the infected up there. There was always the possibility of it being the actual owner of the hive, who you would have seriously disturbed. However, you think they would have come down before if that was the case.

The movement was too heavy to be a meowbeast. It was clearly a person. 

You hear a bit more scuffling and a loud crash.

That’s enough hesitating. If you’ve got to take something out, you may as well just get it over with. You ascend the stairs.

Another message plings onto your phone and the screen lights up, strong sour blue raspberry spreading out over the walls before you. You ignore it. You can get it in a second. 

Upstairs you locate the sound as coming from a door on the left. You ready your cane as you here growling.

The growling doesn’t sound manic or animalistic, though. It sounds… frustrated. It sounds very normal, in fact. It is followed by another smash and a string of angry cursing. 

You relax slightly. You reach for the openbutton with halved caution. 

You hear the distinct thump of someone falling over which is accompanied by some final clattering before you press the button and the door whirs open. 

You are hit with the strong and volatile scents of blood and sweat first. Cleaning chemicals are somewhere in there, too, but not very prominently. The colors, though, have the sweetest smell, overpowering the medical odors. 

Strong, sweet cherries, bright, bright red like the sweetest apple or the most gorgeous rose fills up bookshelves. Jars filled with liquid ruby candy are lined up neatly and it only takes you a second to remember where you’d smelled that specific flavor of red before. 

You’ve found the con man’s stores, apparently. 

As you examine your surroundings closer, you notice there are a number of syringes on the floor. There are also a total of four IV stands, two of which are toppled.

The con man is missing. 

The person currently staring at you while trying to push himself up from the floor is clearly too small to be him. 

You can feel him glaring at you. His skin is pale, a light, frail, grey, but not yellowed. His movements are shaky and clumsy, but he seems to just be exhausted. He’s doing something odd with his arm, though. It’s bent like he’s trying to get up, but he keeps pushing his knuckles into the floor like he’s forgotten how getting up works. 

His eyes keep slipping closed.  
“Who the fuck’re you?” he manages to spit out, despite his apparent fatigue. 

How voice is shaky and his words slurred. A dark web of inky hair falls down over his eyes to obscure his sight. His hand shakes horrifically when he tries to fix it. His claws have been filed down to dull little things. They match his horns, which are rounded at barely make it out of the tangled black nest that was his hair. 

You recognize him from somewhere. 

You recall that the con man had a nubby horned assistant. 

You take a step toward him. His skin is just so pale at the moment, almost powdery. His eyes are ringed with dark stains, but the color of them is not what you’d expect. A rust blood would have rings of a very specific purple. His were a much brighter one, almost pinkish. 

All these jars of peculiar liquid, all these needles and medical supplies, fit themselves together so neatly. He’s an anomaly with mutant blood who, despite the situation of this man conning off his blood as a miracle cure, is very, very, sincerely lucky. He was lucky to live this long. He was luck to even be allowed on this goddamned ship. He was lucky no one had found him yet and that he hadn’t been culled, ripped limb from ruby-lined limb. 

“Who the fuck…” he slurs. He pauses to lick his dry, dead lips. “I asked… Who…” 

He’s trying to sound angry and threatening while he can barely move. 

You phone plings again and you are reminded of the main situation at hand. 

TA: okay youre 2omewhere iin the ru2t blood 2ectiion

TA: iim 2endiing you a map

\---TwinArmageddons sent GallowsCalibrator file mapthiing.png---

TA: TZ

TA: hey are you 2tiill there

TA: 2eriiou2ly

\---File transfer complete---

GC: TH4NKS, 1LL B3 OV3R TH3R3 1N 4 B1T.

GC: 1 4LSO S33M TO H4V3 DISCOV3R3D A D4MS3L IN D1STR3SS, SO 1 M4Y BE DR4GG1NG H1M 4LONG W1TH M3

GC: DR4GG1NG B31NG TH3 K3Y WORD TH3R3

TA: waiit what?

TA: who?

TA: theyre not 2iick are they?

GC: HOLD ON

“’Scuse me, mister cherry cough syrup?” 

You tap him on the shoulder with the toe of your boot. He turns an eye to stare irately at you. His scleras are a rich orange cracked by too-prominent veins. 

“You don’t happen to be infected with zombie-itis, do you?”

His face scrunches up like he’s insulted.

“No.”

GC: H3 S4YS H3S NOT. 

TA: oh well that clear2 that up. no doubt2 here, TZ. no doubt2 anywhere to be found. iit2 liike you’ve ju2t taken my doubt2 about thii2 my2tery guy2 legiitiimacy. ii feel totally alriight with lettiing thii2 guy iin here. 

GC: GL4D YOU S33 IT MY W4Y

TA: iif you have two drag the guy here what the fuck make2 you thiink he2 not 2iick

GC: C4LM DOWN, 1V3 ONLY GOT TO DR4G H1M B3C4US3 H1S BLOODS 4LL IN J4RS INST34D OF H1S V31NS 4ND H3S PR3TTY MUCH THE CONS1ST4NCY OF OLD PUDD1NG. >:/

GC: 1LL B3 TH3R3 1N A B1T. 1F YOU TH1NK H3S S1CK WH3N 1 G3T TH3R3, W3 C4N K1CK H1M OUT OF OUR SUP3R S3CR3T R41NBOW ZOMB13 4POCOLY1THP SURV1V4L CLUB. 

TA: why am ii botheriing, we’re all fucked anyway. briing whatever noodley douche2 you want 

TA: jus2t don’t take two long. youre at rii2k for infectiion.

GC: OKAY. BY3, M1ST3R C4PTOR

TA: yeah bye

You put your phone away for now. 

“So can you walk?” 

You are well aware that this guy is technically supposed to get culled, but there’s something entirely unjust to you about leaving him here.

Unless, of course, he’s the actual mastermind behind this scheme and has been selling his own blood with the help of an expert con artist. You don’t know much about the situation. That possibility is still a plausible one. It doesn’t seem all that likely, but you don’t have much time to look at the situation that carefully. 

He’s still trying to push his chest off the floor. It’s going to be a massive pain to lug this guy around, even if he does look pretty light. 

It’d be easy not only for him to slow you down, but for him to quickly make the transformation into zombie bait. 

You think you’re already decently fond of him, but you may have a bias for his pretty pretty blood. 

This may not be a spectacular plan. 

You straighten up as he struggles with his shaking limbs. 

You produce a coin from your pocket.

“What about your name?”

Oh, he’s managed to push himself up onto his hands. 

“Karkat Vantas” 

His voice is riddled with cracks and shakes with strain.

“I’m Terezi Pyrope,” you say. You show him the coin. “Heads I take you with me, scratch I leave you here. How do you like your odds?”


End file.
